


Some Moral Tales

by Gwynne



Category: Vorkosigan Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-16
Updated: 2018-12-16
Packaged: 2019-09-20 04:15:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17015544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gwynne/pseuds/Gwynne
Summary: Read at your own risk.





	Some Moral Tales

RGmolpus, this is your fault. Your glorious ‘A Clone and His Brother Walk Into a Bar’ post set this in motion. Please stop me now. 

 

Count Vormellier was a brave man. During the Cetagandan invasion he was part of the Resistance, carrying important information to Count Vorkosigan’s forces. Sadly, he was finally captured by the Cetagandans. They wanted the location of the Vorkosigan headquarters, and the Cetagandan general himself came to oversee the questioning. They quickly discovered that the Count was highly allergic to their form of Fast-Penta.

“No problem,” said the General, “We’ll use their own methods. He’ll chicken out soon and tell us everything we want to know.”

But the Count was brave, he refused to speak no matter how they tortured him.

“Fetch an axe,” said the General coldly. “He’ll speak to save his head.”

The soldiers rushed out and found a hatchett that the gardeners used for pruning. The General waved it around, “Speak or you lose your head.”

The Count was pushed to the ground. He lay there, bravely glaring at his captors, “I will never chicken out and betray my people.”

The General swung the hatchett up, then brought it down, “Last chance.”

The Count watched the blade as it swept closer, and finally the brave man broke, “Wait! I’ll tell!” 

But it was too late. The hatchett fell, the Count’s neck was severed. The Cetagandans didn’t get the information.

Moral of the story: Don’t hatchett your Counts before they’ve chickened.

 

…. And more…..

 

There was a Prole who had high ambitions. He thought he should be Vor. More than that, he thought he should be Emperor. (His grandmother told him a family story about a great-great-grandmother who worked in the Residence kitchens, and one night the Emperor of those days came to the kitchens for a late-night-snack…..the story played on his mind until he was convinced that he had Imperial blood.)

He wanted a home fit for an Emperor. He couldn’t afford gold, of course, so he used brass. Shiny and impressive, the house was made of brass pillars and sheeting. 

Then there were the thrones. The real Emperor only had a camp-stool; our ambitious Prole had thrones. Huge ones, ornate, lovingly made out of wood and stone and metal. Thrones in every room, then along the corridors, filling the corners, stacked in any space he could find. At last he made his biggest, most impressive piece, from slabs of marble carried into his shining brass house one by one, and assembled in the middle of the ballroom. It was superb, a huge glistening tribute to his Imperial dreams.

But that last piece of marble was just one too many for the poor house. It trembled, then collapsed, all his dreams tumbling and shattered as the brass gave way under the weight of all those thrones. 

Moral of the story: People who live in brass houses shouldn’t stow thrones.

 

…. And…..

It had been a good harvest. Piotr Vorkosigan smiled as the grapes were tramped under the feet of the village virgins. (There weren’t very many of them, it had been a long winter that year, but enough to keep the precious juice flowing from the grapes.) 

Finally the wine was in the casks, and everyone celebrated and left it to ferment.

But there was an evil plot going on: a gang of criminals hanging around the outskirts of the village had a plan, to steal the wine. They had wagons ready, with the wheels muffled so that no sound gave them away. Even the horses had padding on their feet, so that nobody would hear the wine being taken. 

But someone overheard their plans, an old man dozing nearby in the sun, too old for them to worry about. An old man who’d served under Count Vorkosigan in the bad old days. He rushed to his Count and snitched on the gang, who were all rounded up before they got near the precious wine.

Moral of the story: A snitch in time saves wine. 

 

I apologise for these, I’m trying not to write more.


End file.
